Dr. Garni Tatikian is having second thoughts about her future as a family doctor because of what she calls unfair salaries. Tatikian was among the Canadian health-care workers who shared their experiences with CTVNews.ca about the problems driving some to consider leaving the profession or quit altogether.
What about the taxes not paid on income through deductions? If the business is paying out 25-30% in legitimate expenses against the Doctor’s income, it’s a push. No-one has got anything near an increase to keep up with inflation over the past time span they reference - that’s why Galen Weston is the poster-boy for corporate greed: HE makes more (as do the investor-class of land-owners and stock-players) while we plebes foot the bill.
Goddam, I’d like to get ahead, too, who wouldn’t? But the implicit message here is “Pay me more or I’m gone.” So CTV interviews one doctor who’s uncertain she’ll get sufficient ROI on her Canadian taxpayer subsidized education, who’s facing making a median $250K a year and upset that after expenses and taxes, she won’t have enough left to pay herself anything but “a pretty low rate”.
How low? Well… $250K minus 30% expenses is $175K - and if they are legit deductions, her tax bill will be around $38500, leaving her $136500 as take home. That’s $47.40 per hour.
Here’s some free advice, buttercup, we’re all in the same boat, we just don’t all work in a profession that garners 6-month probationary writers to hear us whinge.
Why would you want to beat down someone else instead of demanding that everyone gets risen up?
Becoming a family doctor in Canada is a minimum 9-year (usually more) postsecondary education. That’s life they’re not getting back. And taxpayer-subsidized though it may be, most family doctors start their careers with six-figure student debt to pay off.
Being a family doctor is emotionally demanding, important to society, and increasingly complex. People can, and do, choose to make more money for less effort in other fields. It’s no longer a promising career path for intelligent young people, which is leading to a shortage of people doing work we all depend on.
So OK, maybe you have no sympathy for them. But don’t be surprised next time you need medical help and there’s nobody there to help you.
This. People are all for unions and collective action until it inconveniences them or it is done by someone they seem “too rich.”
We ARE all in the same boat. Doctors, with few exceptions, are still the working class who depend on their paychecks from their labor. That they are doing something about their conditions should be celebrated and modeled, not condemned.
Traditionally the middle class was doctors, lawyers, business people.
It kind of is again.
Doesn’t mean were not still in the same boat though.
Not a doctor, i spent 7 years on post secondary education and i barely raked in a 5 figure student debt to pay off at ultra low interest.
I had a friend studying to become a doctor. Because of that, banks allowed him to take on huge debts and he bought a brand new fully equipped wrangler. No wonder doctors have 6 figures debt if that’s what banks allow them to take… I knew someone else in dentistry who bought a BMW.
Knowing that will make money, they take on more debt. Then they ask to raise salaries… It’s a system that attracts greedy people, the type that will move out of their home country just to make now money.
For me, it would take about 4 times my current salary to move away, because all my family and friends are here.
The theory you describe is an endlessly increasing resource stream? Or is there a point where taxpayers run out of resources and the doctors, no longer getting what they want, withdraw their services? Does this sound like a rational and well thought out path forward?
Not at all. What I would suggest is improving pay—but even more than that, working conditions—until family medicine work is not such a shitty proposition that medical students don’t even want to go through the residency process to train for it.
I certainly won’t work for $50/hr, and I didn’t spend nearly as much time or money on my education. You’re not really making the point you think you are.